About Us

Our Company

Tactile Labs Inc. is a non-profit organization based in Montreal, Canada. Founded in 2008 by members, alumni and collaborators of McGill University’s Haptics Laboratory, Tactile Labs’ mission is to refine experimental haptic interfaces developed by research laboratories and to make them available to the research community. Our company plays the role of bridging the gap between successful academic projects and pre-commercial development.

The objects of the Corporation are:
1. To develop, manufacture, distribute and promote pre-competitive and experimental haptic technologies.
2. To support and conduct research and development activities related to haptic technologies and their applications.
3. To acquire, license, create, and protect intellectual properties for haptic technologies.
4. To produce, maintain and disseminate technical documentation for haptic technologies developed by the corporation and its members.
5. To support the commercialization of haptic technologies through technology transfers to industrial partners and spin-off companies.

Our Team

Vincent Hayward, Scientific Advisor

Vincent Hayward (Dr.-Ing., 1981 Univ. de Paris XI) was professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University till 2011. As of 2008, he holds the “Chaire internationale d’haptique” at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France and has been Professeur des Universités since 2011. He serves as leader and scientific advisor for the company.

Hayward is interested in haptic device design and applications, perception, and robotics. He co-founded spin-off companies: Haptech (1996), now Immersion Canada Inc. (2000), and RealContact (2002). He is a co-Founder of the Experimental Robotics Symposia, Program Vice-Chair 1998 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, Program Vice-Chair ISR2000, past Associate Editor IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, Governing board Haptics-e, Editorial board of the ACM Transaction on Applied Perception and of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

Hayward has published 68 articles in scientific journals, 21 chapters in collective books, more than 100 articles in international conferences as well as 19 patents. Approximately half of these articles were in the field of haptics. Hayward received several best paper awards and research awards including the NASA Space Act Tech Brief Award (1991) and the E. (Ben) & Mary Hochhausen Award for Research in Adaptive Technology For Blind and Visually Impaired Persons (2002). He is a Fellow of the IEEE (2008).

Xuan Duan, President

Xuan Duan ( PhD’07 McGill University) spent 4 years as post-doc/engineer in NRC working on haptic application projects. She’s been working with Tactile Labs for many years and now serves as president in charge of project management, sales, and technical support.

Xuan has many years of industry experience in real time control applications and software development. She’s also participated many international conferences and workshops in haptic fields. Now she’s on the mission to contribute in haptic applications and bridge academic projects to commercial development.

Hsin-Yun Yao, Secretary

Hsin-Yun Yao (B.Eng.’99 M.Eng.’04 PhD’10)
During her graduate studies, she has worked in collaboration with Queen’s University on the development of the haptic enhanced surgical probe, and with Immersion Corp. on the vibrotactile peception for mobile devices.

Hsin-Yun Yao was awarded the Best Hands-on Demo by conference delegates in EuroHaptics 2006 for her work on vibrotactile synthesis of moving objects. She has four years of industrial experience in software, real-time systems in telecommunication at Nortel Networks and Marconi Communications. Her research interests include vibrotactile actuators, mechanical-electrical systems modelling, embedded systems for haptic devices and tactile perception.

Jean-Samuel Chenard, Head Engineer

Jean-Samuel Chenard (B.Eng.’99 M.Eng.’05) has been with the McGill Integrated Microsystems Laboratory since 2003 and is currently completing a Ph.D. program in microelectronics.

He has more than ten years of industrial work experience in digital hardware and circuit design of telecommunication systems, aerospace products and research instruments. He worked for Marconi Optical Networks from 2000 to 2003 and was involved in multiple projects as a hardware design consultant for various companies in the Montreal area. His experience involves embedded systems, low-power wireless interfaces and FPGA designs. He is also the co-owner of Optimal Microsystems, a hardware consulting company and online retailer of microcontroller development boards and operating since 2004.